Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust, which had $22.5 billion in total assets as of September 30, 2012 (the date of the most recently available filing with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service),[1] and is one of the world's largest non-profit foundations. According to The Independent, "It was founded in 1936 on the death of American-born pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry Wellcome, who vested the entire share capital of his drug company the Wellcome Foundation in five trustees with instructions on how to spend the income. It is the UK's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research, investing more than £500m 'to improve human and animal health' and to promote the understanding of science. In 1986, the Wellcome Foundation was floated on the stock exchange with a quarter of its shares sold to the public. The rest were sold off in 1995, when the company was bought by Glaxo to form GlaxoWellcome, which evolved into GlaxoSmithKline."[2]